The Second World War

A magisterial, single volume history of the greatest conflict the world has ever known, by our foremost military historian. The Second World War began in August 1939 on the edge of Manchuria and ended there exactly six years later with the Soviet invasion of northern China. The war in Europe appeared completely divorced from the war in the Pacific and China, and yet events on opposite sides of the world had profound effects.

The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923

For the Western allies, 11 November 1918 has always been a solemn date - the end of fighting which had destroyed a generation and a vindication of a terrible sacrifice with the total collapse of their principal enemies: the German Empire, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. But for much of the rest of Europe, this was a day with no meaning, as a continuing nightmarish series of conflicts engulfed country after country. In this highly original, gripping book, Robert Gerwarth asks us to think again about the true legacy of the First World War.

Hitler: A Biography

Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in the 20th century.

Somme: Into the Breach

No conflict better encapsulates all that went wrong on the Western Front than the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The tragic loss of life and stoic endurance by troops who walked towards their death is an iconic image which will be hard to ignore during the centennial year. Despite this, this book shows the extent to which the Allied armies were in fact able repeatedly to break through the German front lines.

Battle for the Falklands

The Falklands War was one of the strangest in British history - 28,000 men sent to fight for a tiny relic of empire 8,000 miles from home. At the time, many Britons saw it as a tragic absurdity, but the British victory confirmed the quality of British arms and boosted the political fortunes of the Conservative government.

Three powerful radio productions from the BBC archives starring Ian McKellen, Ronald Pickup and Paul Scofield and a host of celebrated acting talent. These three legendary plays, performed by some of the best-known theatrical actors of the 20th century, are the perfect way to commemorate England's greatest dramatist.

Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy 1944

The famous D-Day landings of 6 June, 1944, marked the beginning of Operation Overlord, the battle for the liberation of Europe. Republished as part of the Pan Military Classics series, Max Hastings' acclaimed account overturns many traditional legends in this memorable study. Drawing together the eyewitness accounts of survivors from both sides, plus a wealth of previously untapped sources and documents, Overlord provides a brilliant, controversial perspective on the devastating battle.

Lancaster and York: The Wars of the Roses

Lancater and York is a riveting account of the Wars of the Roses, from beloved historian Alison Weir. The war between the houses of Lancaster and York was characterised by treachery, deceit, and bloody battles. Alison Weir's lucid and gripping account focuses on the human side of history. At the centre of the book stands Henry VI, the pious king whose mental instability led to political chaos, and his wife Margaret of Anjou, who took up her arms in her husband's cause and battled in a violent man's world.

Bleak House

A complex plot of love and inheritance is set against the English legal system of the mid-19th century. As the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce drags on, it becomes an obsession to everyone involved. And the issue on an inheritance ultimately becomes a question of murder.

Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's account of his experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and a portrait of disillusionment with his early politics. Orwell's experiences include being shot in the neck by a sniper, and being forced into hiding as factions of the Left battled on the streets of Barcelona. Orwell entered Spain intending to gather an experience worth writing as well as to fight Fascism, and wrote Homage to Catalonia within months of his return.

King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta

The brilliantly compelling new biography of the treacherous and tyrannical King John, published to coincide with the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Authoritative and dramatic, Marc Morris' King John offers a compelling portrait of an extraordinary king whose reign marked a momentous turning point in the history of Britain and Europe. King John is buried in Worcester Cathedral.

A Little History of Religion

In an era of hardening religious attitudes and explosive religious violence, this book offers a welcome antidote. Richard Holloway retells the entire history of religion - from the dawn of religious belief to the 21st century - with deepest respect and a keen commitment to accuracy. Writing for those with faith and those without, and especially for young listeners, he encourages curiosity and tolerance, accentuates nuance and mystery and calmly restores a sense of the value of faith.

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world's most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through 34 nations and 60 years of political and cultural change-all in one integrated, enthralling narrative.

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Author of the National Book Award-winning All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy is one of the most provocative American stylists to emerge in the last century. The striking novel Blood Meridian offers an unflinching narrative of the brutality that accompanied the push west on the 1850s Texas frontier.

Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior

Every day of your life is spent surrounded by mysteries that involve what appear to be rather ordinary human behaviors. What makes you happy? Where did your personality come from? Why do you have trouble controlling certain behaviors? Why do you behave differently as an adult than you did as an adolescent?Since the start of recorded history, and probably even before, people have been interested in answering questions about why we behave the way we do.

D DAY Through German Eyes: The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944

Almost all accounts of D-Day are told from the Allied perspective, with the emphasis on how German resistance was overcome on June 6, 1944. But what was it like to be a German soldier in the bunkers and gun emplacements of the Normandy coast, facing the onslaught of the mightiest seaborne invasion in history? What motivated the German defenders, what were their thought processes - and how did they fight from one strong point to another, among the dunes and fields, on that first cataclysmic day?

March Violets

Ex-policeman Bernie Gunther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin - until he turned freelance and he is sucked further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture. The year is 1936 and Berlin is preparing for the Olympic Games. Some of Bernie's Jewish friends are beginning to realise that they should have left while they could, and Bernie himself has been hired by a wealthy industrialist to investigate two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party.

All Hell Let Loose

The complete magisterial history of the greatest and most terrible event in history, from one of the finest historians of the Second World War. This shows the impact of war upon hundreds of millions of people around the world - soldiers, sailors and airmen; housewives, farm workers and children. Reflecting Max Hastings' 35 years of research on World War II, All Hell Let Loose describes the course of events but focuses chiefly upon human experience.

Parliament Ltd: A journey to the dark heart of British politics

In Parliament Ltd, investigative journalist Martin Williams reveals the true extent of greed and corruption in Westminster. Containing explosive new revelations about the activities of those at the top, this is a shocking untold tale that goes to the rotten heart of British politics.

Berlin: The Downfall: 1945

The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Reich in January 1945. Political instructors rammed home the message of Wehrmacht and SS brutality. The result was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known, with tanks crushing refugee columns under their tracks, mass rape, pillage and destruction. Over seven million fled westwards from the terror of the Red Army. Antony Beevor reconstructs the experiences of those millions caught up in the nightmare of the Third Reich's final collapse.

Crisis

Introducing Luke Carlton - ex-Special Boat Service commando and now under contract to MI6 for some of its most dangerous missions. Sent into the steaming Colombian jungle to investigate the murder of a British intelligence officer, Luke finds himself caught up in the coils of a plot that has terrifying international dimensions.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Here in a single volume is the entire, unabridged recording of Gibbon's masterpiece. Beginning in the second century A.D. at the apex of the Pax Romana, Gibbon traces the arc of decline and complete destruction through the centuries across Europe and the Mediterranean. It is a thrilling and cautionary tale of splendor and ruin, of faith and hubris, and of civilization and barbarism. Follow along as Christianity overcomes paganism... before itself coming under intense pressure from Islam.

The Memory Illusion: Why You May Not Be Who You Think You Are

Think you have a good memory? Think again. Memories are our most cherished possessions. We rely on them every day of our lives. They make us who we are. And yet the truth is they are far from being the accurate records of the past we like to think they are. True, we can all admit to having suffered occasional memory lapses, such as entering a room and immediately forgetting why or suddenly being unable to recall the name of someone we've met dozens of times. But what if we have the potential for more profound errors of memory?

Publisher's Summary

The Amazon History Book of the Year 2013 is a magisterial chronicle of the calamity that befell Europe in 1914 as the continent shifted from the glamour of the Edwardian era to the tragedy of total war.

Nineteen fourteen was a year of unparalleled change. The year that diplomacy failed, imperial Europe was thrown into its first modernised warfare and white-gloved soldiers rode in their masses across pastoral landscapes into the blaze of machine guns. What followed were the costliest days of the entire war. But how had it happened?

In Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914, Max Hastings, best-selling author of the acclaimed All Hell Let Loose, answers at last how World War I could ever have begun.

Ranging across Europe, from Paris to St. Petersberg, from Kings to corporals, Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 traces how tensions across the continent kindled into a blaze of battles - not the stalemates of later trench-warfare but battles of movement and dash where Napoleonic tactics met with weapons from a newly industrialised age. A searing analysis of the power brokering, vanity and bluff in the diplomatic maelstrom reveals who was responsible for the birth of this catastrophic world in arms. Mingling the experiences of humbler folk with the statesmen on whom their lives depended, Hastings asks: whose actions were justified? From the outbreak of war through to its terrible making and the bloody gambles in Sarajevo and Mons, Le Cateau, Marne and Tannenberg, this is the international story of World War I in its most severe and influential period.

Published to coincide with its 100th Anniversary, Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 explains how and why this war, which shattered and changed the Western world for ever, was fought.

What the Critics Say

"Magnificent...Hastings writes with an enviable grasp of pace and balance, as well as an acute eye for human detail. Even for readers who care nothing for the difference between a battalion and a division, his book is at once moving, provocative and utterly engrossing." (Sunday Times) "Masterly...Hastings is a brilliant guide to that strange, febrile twilight before Europe plunged into darkness. Writing in pungent prose suffused with irony and underpinned by a strong sense of moral outrage, Catastrophe is a frontal assault on what Hastings calls the "poets' view"...This is history-writing at its best, scholarly and fluent...for anyone wanting to understand how that ghastly, much-misunderstood conflict came about, there could be no better place to start than this fine book." (The Times) "One could scarcely ask for a better guide to these horrors than Max Hastings...he is a superb writer with a rare gift for evoking the rhythm, mood and raw physical terror of battle...If you are looking for a humane and compelling interpretive chronicle of the formative months of this horrific conflict, you will find none better." (Mail on Sunday) "Very readable. Character, pace, sense of landscape, battlefield detail - all are superbly done...it's a splendid read." (Observer) "'No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening', wrote Churchill, and Hastings does full justice to its appalling drama...Catastrophe is rich in unexplored sources from every side of the conflict and every theatre of the war." (David Crane, Spectator) "Vigorous and readable, making good use of the worm's eye-view...Engaging, well paced and, despite the grim subject matter, often entertaining." (New Statesman) "Vivid and compelling...superbly detailed and nuanced...Hastings is a master of the pen portrait and the quirky fact...yet his greatness as a historian - never shown to better effect than in this excellent book - lies in his willingness to challenge entrenched opinion." (Saul David, Evening Standard)

An excellent account of the build up to the war and its first 12 months. A good balance between detail and strategic level coverage. A useful addition to the wealth of narration on the subject providing useful perspective. Good narration.

If you could sum up Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 in three words, what would they be?

authoritive, comprehensive & readible

Any additional comments?

A really in-depth look at the build up to War and the consequences thereafter. Refreshing to read this even handed review from all perspectives. <br/>The best book I've read on the subject of the break-out of The Great War.

A thought provoking and riveting read. Definitely recommended for any budding historian. It will challenge some of your preconceived ideas of the first world war and hit you with the shocking reality of others.

I recently listened to the author’s magisterial history of the Second World War, All Hell Let Loose, and had high hopes that the present book about the First WW would be similarly illuminating. It is, though more concentrated in time covering just the five months of war in 1914. The author gives a detailed account of how so many countries got involved in the war, and their varying reasons, but overall it appears it was without much thought other than the hubris of rulers and/or hopes of grabbing more land, with the assassination of Austrian Archduke merely acting as the trigger.

It’s astonishing how confident both the leaders and general public were that the conflict would be over in weeks or months. The naivety of the early volunteers, over how the war would be waged, is heart-breaking and the horrors they had to endure beyond anything they could have dreamed possible. Many of the armies were ill-prepared for war, which added to the soldiers suffering and the casual way that, often incompetent, generals pushed men to their deaths as literally cannon fodder is appalling. ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ is a phrase used about the leadership of the First WW, but it’s an insult to donkeys!

Though not a happy listen it’s a chastening reminder of how terrible war can be, especially when several parties are involved and how ‘modern’ warfare ravages towns and cities, involves civilians and decimates the large tracks of land.